Middle School Cancels ‘Honors’ Night Because it Hurts Feeeeelings

A middle school in Rhode Island had canceled its night meant to honor students who achieved excellent grades because officials felt that the annual honors ceremony would hurt the self esteem of those more stupid kids who didn’t get top grades.

Parents whose children attend the Archie R. Cole Middle School in East Greenwhich, RI, were sent an email this week telling them that the annual honors night was canceled because administrators were wringing their liberal hands over the “exclusive nature” of the ceremony.

“Members of the school community have long expressed concerns related to the exclusive nature of Honors Night,” the email began.

The school wanted to eliminate a special night to honor kids with high grades or excellence in extra curricular activities and instead have individual, smaller ceremonies based within the events, teams or classes where the kids excelled. This would have eliminated the greater recognition of the high achievers and served to create more understated, less public displays of recognition. In other words, the school-wide platform of recognition would be eliminated replaced by quieter recognition that would not hurt the dumb kids’ feelings.

The school felt that kids who weren’t being honored would be crushed because they weren’t as smart or successful as others. Why, their self esteem would be forever destroyed, these foolish “educators” imagined.

Parents started complaining immediately about this spineless, liberal, social re-engineering of their school’s culture. One parent told the local TV news, “How else are they suppose to learn coping skills, not just based on success, but relative failure, it might not be failure, but understand what it takes to achieve high levels.”

This is a prime example of, well, several things. It is evidence that liberals need to be eliminated from our system of mis-education, certainly, but it is also evidence most of the fact that the left is systematically attempting to destroy achievement and excellence in this country and working to train kids that being good at something is an evil that must be avoided.

The liberal administrators eventually relented and re-scheduled the honors night. But the back tracking is meaningless, really, because it is clear they are quietly teaching kids that achievers are bad.

But this is the liberal credo. If you have achieved excellence in anything “you didn’t build that.” You stole it, you cheated, you were handed it without work, or you got it just because you are a white male. What ever it is you achieved, you didn’t earn it and don’t deserve it. Further you shouldn’t be recognized for achieving it.

They’re starting that next year at my son’s high school. No more valedictorian/salutatorian. What a bunch of pussies.

jim_m

It’s not that they are pussies, it is that they want to take away the reward for achievement. If there are no longer rewards or measures of achievement then the only way a person can get ahead is through connections. That is the left working to create a modern aristocracy where only those born to wealth will be able to achieve wealth. This is the left working to pull the ladder up behind them.

And I don’t think they’re even doing it consciously – they’re simply responding the way they’ve been trained.

My grandma had a bunch of books by Horatio Alger – kid-level stuff, pointing out that hard work and honorable behavior got you further than stealing and living on handouts. Simplistic – but right.

Hard work equaled success. (Kept you out of trouble with bad companions, too…)

Now the successful are suspect – if they’re conservative. If you’re liberal, you’re untouchable unless you get caught in bed with a live goat or a dead boy.

Well, guess we’ll see where it all goes – but I’m thinking the idea that the government can do everything and we need to make our society ‘fair’ for everyone is going to fall by the wayside in the next decade or two…

Retired military

I have read an update to this that the school relented (after a lot of pressure) and reschedule a separate honors night.
Still it seems to me that someone in charge wants to push mediocracy rather than excellence.

warnertoddhuston

Yes. I mentioned that in the piece above.

jim_m

We should stop handing out high school diplomas because that will discourage the stupid who can’t pass. We should just hand out participaton certificates instead. Well, to be honest that is pretty much what we do in many districts already.

Paul Hooson

Christ, I can’t believe this stuff. My whole life has been devoted to working so hard that I end up on the top of the heap, whether it was in school or business. A hard work ethic should be rewarded in American society. Those that worker harder deserve to have more money and a better life than those that slack off.

jim_m

BUt the left answers saying, “What about those who can’t work hard or who don’t have your ability? They deserve success too. America will never be free until people are able to have the same outcomes, the same success, no matter what their abilities or their effort. We need equality of outcomes to be truly equal.”

That is what the left is demanding, that people be rewarded the same no matter what they do and that means that government be in charge of redistribution of wealth to ensure that everyone is equally poor.

I think that their argument is that if things were truly equal then the outcomes would be too. The problem is that people are not all equal and some are smarter or stronger or more skilled than other people and deserve to be rewarded for the outcomes that they can deliver that are better than what others can do. But the left doesn’t want to face that reality. Like much of their ideology, this issues is another denial of reality.